Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

I wish to talk about the National Spatial Strategy 2002-2020. Our motion said the Minister had failed to implement a national spatial strategy that properly distributed services, facilities and opportunities throughout the country. However, the Government states that a comprehensive range of measures has been put in place at national, regional and local levels to support the continuing implementation of the national spatial strategy. It seems crazy that the Government, in its own motion, says it is handsomely delivering the national spatial strategy when only last December it turned it on its head with a pork barrel hand-out of decentralisation. That pork barrel hand-out of the Minister and his colleague McCreevy failed to reflect the national spatial strategy.

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